SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Nineteen
Reese had held out as long as she could. She resisted using the shower but had decided she could no longer stand her own smell. The frosted glass privacy panel offered very little comfort. She was glad she had no need for the toilet. That would have been humiliating. She searched the stall for any signs of a camera but could not find one. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. She turned on the water, set it to scalding and allowed the stall to fill with steam before removing a single stich of clothing. Taking a shower had become strictly a function of hygiene since joining the undead. At home Reese washed in the ice cold water that the living allowed to run down the drain while waiting for a warmer spray to spring from the shower head. Being undead certainly helped keep the utility bills down. Reese didn’t know if a shower could ever make her feel physically refreshed again, but it certainly cleared her mind. She closed her eyes and let the rivulets of water cascade down her well-toned frame. A small pool formed at her feet as the sudsy liquid waited patiently for its turn to slide down the drain. She lathered, rinsed, but refused to repeat since she was convinced the process was a ploy to get you to use twice as much shampoo as needed. She turned off the water and pulled a towel onto her head, scrunching her hair a few times. She leaned forward and twisted the towel into a turban. She patted herself dry with a second towel and wondered what softener her captor used to keep their laundry so soft. Reese gave her hair and teeth a quick brushing and applied a coat of lip balm. Every toiletry she used at home was at her disposal. Whoever was holding her sure had done their homework. She reached for her jeans and found that they had been replaced with a familiar pair from her own wardrobe. Her captor hadn’t done his homework; he just went through her luggage. Still, the familiar items did help Reese to relax a bit. It hadn’t occurred to her that her steam room maneuver would also prevent her from seeing her captor if he entered the cell. She hung the damp towels so that they would dry and re-entered the main area of her cell.
“Did you enjoy your shower, Misses Witmoore?”
A voice from the couch startled Reese. Her pupils widened involuntarily as her fangs started to drop. She stopped herself mid-turn upon seeing the statuesque blonde standing behind the couch with her hands planted atop its back. She wore a short, embroidered jacket and jeans to match that Reese would have asked to borrow if they had been friends. A metal and leather appliance was set on the seat before her. It resembled a piece of orthodontic headgear or possibly an antique underwater breathing apparatus. A brass cylinder ran horizontally across the lower portion of the device. At one side a squeeze bulb connected to rubber tube was integrated into a cap at the cylinder’s end. The opposite end of the cylinder connected to a series of clear rubber tubes that all lead into the top of a sealed glass jar. Ornate silver-filigreed brackets held the cylinder to wide tooled leather straps that ended in locking buckles that were equally ornate. The straps showed decades of wear. The mechanism had definitely been used before. The steampunk aesthetic of the device set against the cell’s minimalistic modern amenities made it appear even more sinister.
“It was as if I were staying at a four-star hotel that I can never leave.” Reese quipped, adding a fake smile. The blonde responded with an equally fake pout.
“Now, Reese. . . . May I call you Reese?”
“Sure.”
“Good. You may call me Jayne. Jayne with a ‘y’.”
“Does the spelling affect the pronunciation?”
“Slightly. I am assuming you may have a notion of why I am here,” Jayne said, pointing toward the device.
“Considering I was told that I was going to be ‘milked’, I think I can guess. I shudder to think of what that thing might be.” Reese, keeping to her word, shuddered.
Jayne raised the item in one hand and did a sweeping game show hostess gesture around the unit with the other, pointing to the specific features as she described them.
“What you see before you is a mid-nineteenth-century vampire muzzle and venom extractor, commonly used to control captive or indentured parasitic humanoids. The cylindrical brass vacuum chamber aids in the collection of venom which was then used for one of two things: infecting individuals or the creation of anti-venom. The glass collection jar could also be filled with numerous compounds that could be forced up through the fangs and into the venom sacs by reversing the process.”
“What purpose would that serve?”
“It was thought that a vampire could be neutered if his ability to secrete venom was removed.”
“Did it work?”
“No. The vampires’ ability to repair and regenerate body parts allowed them to shed the destroyed sacs and grow new ones. The device, however, does work well as a milking machine. We will see if it comes to that.”
“I believe I would prefer any other method.”
“I understand your physiology is different from most other vampires. They typically have the ability to extend and contract their canines, or fangs as you might call them. You and your husband are hybrids, a combination of viper and vampire. Your fangs drop from chambers in the roof of your mouth as if they were hinged. It may be difficult to get your fangs into the extractor.” Jane licked her thumb and used it to clear a smudge from the cylinder.
It hadn’t gone unnoticed that Jayne had mentioned Wit. Reese had visibly tensed when Jayne had talked about her husband. Jayne looked up from the extractor to gauge Reese’s reaction.
“Yes, I have met your husband. They call him ‘Wit’, don’t they?”
“How do you know Wit?”
“Let’s say he and I had dinner together earlier this week. Kinda dorky. He has a certain charm about him, doesn’t he?”
“I’ve always thought so.”
“He said I reminded him of that actress on ‘Bewitched’,” Jayne said with a flip of her hair.
“Damn him. He is only supposed to use the ‘Jeanie/Bewitched’ lines on older women. He must have thought you were old. What was the lighting like?” Reese replied, sounding catty.
“Soft. Low. Romantic. He was awfully attentive.”
“What were you eating?”
“Chorizo and egg tacos with a margarita.”
“Oh, that explains everything. You could have looked like a warthog and he would have paid you the same attention with that sitting in front of you!” Reese laughed. “I should have known he would be off his diet as soon as I walked out the door. “
“Diet? What do you mean, diet?”
“We try to only feed on vegetarians. They’re better for you.”
“Why would that matter? You two are technically dead.”
“Why does it matter that you spell Jayne with a ‘y’?”
“Okay, I’ll give you that one.”
“Vampires one, blonde henchman zero.” Reese held up her hand in the shape of an “o”.
“You’re much more clever than your husband was. He was so easy to manipulate. You may be a bit harder to handle.”
“What exactly did you handle with my husband?” Reese would have started turning pink if she were alive.
“I took whatever I wanted, including some bodily fluids and his dignity. Then I literally tossed him aside like a used tissue.” Jayne pushed Reese’s button again, causing her pupils to dilate into glossy black saucers that swallowed the whites of her eyes.
“Bitch!” Reese growled as she leapt to the couch, swinging her leg into a roundhouse kick headed for the right side of Jayne’s head.
Jayne ducked, allowing Reese’s foot to sail over her head and into her outstretched hand. Jayne pushed herself backward, pulling Reese over the back of the couch. Reese used the momentum to propel herself into an awkward cartwheel allowing her to land several feet away from Jayne, who was in the middle of a perfectly executed back flip. The two landed simultaneously as if they were a synchronized tumbling act. Jayne added a second back flip, catching Reese around the head with her legs, locked her feet to close the scissor hold, and dropped them both to the floor. Reese sank her fangs deep into Jayne’s thigh and twisted her head violently toward the knee, tearing a crescent shaped gash through the denim and flesh. Jayne screamed as a blue-green liquid resembling anti-freeze gushed from the wound and painted the side of Reese’s face. The liquid stung Reese’s eyes and soured in her mouth. Jayne swung the extractor, denting the brass vacuum chamber against Rees’s forehead. Both combatants release their grips and crawled in opposite directions.
“What the fuck are you?” Reese spit out the caustic goo that lingered in her mouth.
“Pissed off!”
Jayne reached inside her jacket and pulled out a polished black rectangle. She pointed the narrow end of it at Reese and pressed her thumb into the single indentation that interrupted the perfectly flat surface. Bright white flecks of light appeared in every tiny mirrored cube that made up the floor and ceiling. The flecks pulsated for a few seconds. The ones furthest from where Reese laid curled in a crumpled ball extinguished entirely while the ones closer to her grew in intensity. The process repeated itself. With each cycle the furthest lights extinguished as the closest ones intensified. In a matter of seconds a shaft of blinding light formed directly through the exact spot Reese was huddled.
It tore at her flesh, burning and blistering every inch of exposed skin. She howled as her forearms split like grilled sausage casings, fluid bubbling and spitting out of each fissure. Jayne removed her thumb from the indentation and the shaft of light disappeared with a crackle. The three brief seconds of torture had felt like an eternity.
Jayne limped across the cell, grabbed Reese by the hair and plunged her fangs into the extractor. Reese was too weak to hold her head upright. The added weight of the extractor pulled her chin down into her chest. Her singed hair stuck to the weeping sores that covered her once delicate cheekbones. She managed to keep from whimpering but could not keep her body from trembling. A random memory of coating Sunny with SPF 50 sunscreen before she ran out the door to play flashed through her mind.
A honey-colored liquid pooled in the bottom of the collection jar as Jayne squeezed the bulb on the vacuum chamber. She had lost a heavy amount of life fluid and was a bit shaky herself. She stopped short of milking Reese dry for fear of damaging the venom sacs. She had possibly destroyed their primary source and couldn’t afford to ruin their only remaining source of venom.
“Do you have enough?” A voice emanated from the speakers on the video console.
“That’s the first thing you ask? How about ’Are you okay?’ Jayne leered at the console.
“Fine. Are you okay?”
“I’ve been better. I think I have enough venom if we combine it with the first sample. Please have a unit of my life fluid, a suture and a pair of scrub pants ready when I get to the lab.”
“Which ones?”
“What?”
“Which scrub pants?”
“I don’t care! The blue ones.”
“Really? The black ones are much more slimming.”
“Fine! The black ones.”
“Jayne.”
“What?”
“Nice work.”
“Thanks.”